"Smart, witty people being reasonable....gaaaaaah!"
Friday, June 26, 2020
Intelligence that makes me do that Homer Simpson drool
My God. I am watching Planet America Fireside Chat on ABC News, and once again it's such exquisitely intelligent commentary it makes me want to do that Homer Simpson drool when he thinks of pork chops.
Conservatives and their social media
I see that even at Catallaxy, the first attempt at a Twitter/Facebook alternative that wasn't going to "censor" conservative opinion - Gab - has been derided as being so taken over by (I think) white nationalist nutters that even the routinely offensive members of Catallaxy are warning each other not to try it. (I wouldn't know - I see no reason to switch from reading Twitter.)
So the second attempt at freedom to be as offensive as they want - Parler - is currently getting a lot of promotion from conservatives. I reckon the prediction here will be correct:
Two things - conservatives continue their attempt to reinvent the meaning of censorship; and they seem gormlessly intent on proving via these attempts at alternatives that there is extremely good reason for companies providing social media platforms to have standards that they will enforce in order to make them want to be used, and commercially viable.
So the second attempt at freedom to be as offensive as they want - Parler - is currently getting a lot of promotion from conservatives. I reckon the prediction here will be correct:
Two things - conservatives continue their attempt to reinvent the meaning of censorship; and they seem gormlessly intent on proving via these attempts at alternatives that there is extremely good reason for companies providing social media platforms to have standards that they will enforce in order to make them want to be used, and commercially viable.
Exactly
Women and sport and my confusion
As readers would know, I pay very little attention to sport. It's only occasionally of interest - State of Origin rugby league; the spectacle of Olympic openings and of some individual sports - how can you not be impressed by how people learn to pole vault or ski jump? And if an athlete seems a nice enough person, it can be good to see them win and get some benefit out of years of what would otherwise be more-or-less wasted effort.
But when it comes to women's team sports, I cannot muster any interest, let alone enthusiasm, at all. Hence today's excitement about Australian and New Zealand hosting the FIFA Women's World Cup leaves me completely cold, and once again baffled as to how they have become popular.
I like to think my inability to want to watch a team of women is sound in evolutionary biology terms. Men's team sports, particularly the only one I ever watch (if only a few times a year), rugby league, is readily interpreted as a substitute to watching a team of hunters planning and moving as a pack to hunt their quarry. Or, to update the analogy, as a substitute for watching competing lines of men trying to acquire ground in battle. (This is why it makes so much sense to me as to why it should be my preferred code - not like soccer or AFL where clear lines moving up and down a field of play don't exist.)
This reasoning leaves little room for an explanation for people liking ball hitting games like cricket, baseball, or even tennis; although with the latter, it is so concentrated on the individual's stamina and talent, I can see why it has some appeal. With cricket and baseball - well, they both often have the crowd amusing themselves while the play itself is boring, so they have their own weird dynamic of crowd solidarity that is not exactly part of my make up, but it's obviously a thing.
But back to team sports - I can't shake the feeling that gender really matters to why I don't have any interest in them because what is happening on the field is nothing like what women have ever done in an evolutionary sense. It's different from watching a woman who is good at an individual sport - I see nothing wrong with that, unless it's something like weightlifting. (But hey, I couldn't care less about what men do in some obscure sports, either.)
Yet, I seem to be alone in this, and lots of men (increasingly, on both sides of political spectrum, too) will say they are enthusiastic followers of women's team sports.
I really don't understand how that has happened. I find it so strange, especially when in quite a few sports there is a high proportion of lesbian players, rendering any more base evolutionary biology explanation irrelevant, that I am starting to wonder if there is something weird going on, like plastics chemicals in drinking water, or something. [I am joking. Sort of. Seriously, I find this more surprising and inexplicable than Western societies' turnaround on gay relationships.]
But when it comes to women's team sports, I cannot muster any interest, let alone enthusiasm, at all. Hence today's excitement about Australian and New Zealand hosting the FIFA Women's World Cup leaves me completely cold, and once again baffled as to how they have become popular.
I like to think my inability to want to watch a team of women is sound in evolutionary biology terms. Men's team sports, particularly the only one I ever watch (if only a few times a year), rugby league, is readily interpreted as a substitute to watching a team of hunters planning and moving as a pack to hunt their quarry. Or, to update the analogy, as a substitute for watching competing lines of men trying to acquire ground in battle. (This is why it makes so much sense to me as to why it should be my preferred code - not like soccer or AFL where clear lines moving up and down a field of play don't exist.)
This reasoning leaves little room for an explanation for people liking ball hitting games like cricket, baseball, or even tennis; although with the latter, it is so concentrated on the individual's stamina and talent, I can see why it has some appeal. With cricket and baseball - well, they both often have the crowd amusing themselves while the play itself is boring, so they have their own weird dynamic of crowd solidarity that is not exactly part of my make up, but it's obviously a thing.
But back to team sports - I can't shake the feeling that gender really matters to why I don't have any interest in them because what is happening on the field is nothing like what women have ever done in an evolutionary sense. It's different from watching a woman who is good at an individual sport - I see nothing wrong with that, unless it's something like weightlifting. (But hey, I couldn't care less about what men do in some obscure sports, either.)
Yet, I seem to be alone in this, and lots of men (increasingly, on both sides of political spectrum, too) will say they are enthusiastic followers of women's team sports.
I really don't understand how that has happened. I find it so strange, especially when in quite a few sports there is a high proportion of lesbian players, rendering any more base evolutionary biology explanation irrelevant, that I am starting to wonder if there is something weird going on, like plastics chemicals in drinking water, or something. [I am joking. Sort of. Seriously, I find this more surprising and inexplicable than Western societies' turnaround on gay relationships.]
Could be a fair summary?
The Economist has an article behind its paywall, but here is the headline:
Sounds about right, is my hunch. And it makes for a very real problem for politicians. Of course, I am very glad that it is Trump caught in the dilemma.
Sounds about right, is my hunch. And it makes for a very real problem for politicians. Of course, I am very glad that it is Trump caught in the dilemma.
World War 1 (and a gripe about education)
I find myself full of admiration for the people who put together these witty, all age friendly, largely accurate, summaries of history. I encourage you to view these two videos summarising (in barely 15 minutes, combined!) the rather notoriously hard to simplify history of World War 1, and hopefully you will agree they are both dense with information and give an overview that is so often lacking in education:
It also makes me feel that schooling in my life time, and probably before it, is not so great at the Big Picture when it comes to history and historical developments. I guess you could say, if you are a conservative, that the move away from teaching the Western canon is a key example of failure to give an overview: but I guess there are overviews, and then there are narrowly biased overviews which modern educationalists think are important to avoid.
It is a tricky area, but as I say, I am very impressed by those people who are trying to make learning more about complicated history more digestible.
It also makes me feel that schooling in my life time, and probably before it, is not so great at the Big Picture when it comes to history and historical developments. I guess you could say, if you are a conservative, that the move away from teaching the Western canon is a key example of failure to give an overview: but I guess there are overviews, and then there are narrowly biased overviews which modern educationalists think are important to avoid.
It is a tricky area, but as I say, I am very impressed by those people who are trying to make learning more about complicated history more digestible.
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
World's greatest democracy still can't get democracy right
What the hell do Americans find so hard about having polling stations stay open until all of those who arrived before closing get a chance to vote?? Why do we see so regularly this theatre of urgent applications to judges to get the polling station to stay open to let long delayed voters vote?
I would be really embarrassed about this if I were an American:
I would be really embarrassed about this if I were an American:
So long to the Segway (and my plans for electric scooters to help save the world)
Well, this is really going to date people in the future: grandparents will be able to tell kids about the start of the 21st century when you could see sometimes see police (or mall cops, or tourists) riding a dangerous standing electric thingee:
As for what is effectively its successor - the electric scooter - I still haven't tried one, but it keeps occurring to me that in my not-so-radical-but-why-does-no-one-else-think-of-this plans to reduce carbon emissions, the government could probably do a lot worse than give every student who graduates from high school an $800 electric scooter as a personal transport device to tide them over until they can afford to buy an electric car. Segway makes a good one, but so does Xiaomi, and it is important to please our coming Chinese overlords, so I would go for one of those.
(I still think three wheel electric scooters would be safer, but seems that few are made.)
Segway, which boldly claimed its two-wheeled personal transporter would revolutionize the way people get around, is ending production of its namesake vehicle.The funniest thing, of course, was all the build up to its disclosure as a "revolutionary" device that will change our cities. And then the vastly underwhelmed TV host with her (justifiably) dismissive "is that all?". Is that clip on Youtube?
The Segway PT, popular with tourists and police officers but perhaps better known for its high-profile crashes, will be retired on 15 July, the company said in a statement.
As for what is effectively its successor - the electric scooter - I still haven't tried one, but it keeps occurring to me that in my not-so-radical-but-why-does-no-one-else-think-of-this plans to reduce carbon emissions, the government could probably do a lot worse than give every student who graduates from high school an $800 electric scooter as a personal transport device to tide them over until they can afford to buy an electric car. Segway makes a good one, but so does Xiaomi, and it is important to please our coming Chinese overlords, so I would go for one of those.
(I still think three wheel electric scooters would be safer, but seems that few are made.)
Just what we needed...more satellites
I seem to have not noticed this development:
And OK, next question: if a phone can use any of the different services, how does it pick one to use at any particular time? Does it look for the first signal from any of the systems it can use and then go with that system? I just Googled the question, but the answer is not yet clear.
Would be impressive, in an evil overlord sort of way, if the Chinese system allowed them to track anyone whose phone chose to use their network. Is there already a conspiracy theory based on this?
Update: by coincidence, Axios has a short article up about "the looming threats posed by space junk". It's one of those issues that seems constantly talked about, but with little effective action being taken.
China on Tuesday launched the final satellite in its homegrown geolocation system designed to rival the US GPS network, marking a major step in its race for market share in the lucrative sector....It's been operating at some level since 2018. I'm not sure how they make money from these services - I presume GPS chip manufacturers pay for access to their particular network. I notice mobile phone specs do often list the GPS network they can use, but I haven't notice "Beidou" before. What if I check Huawei phones:
Beidou – named after the Chinese term for the plow or “Big Dipper” constellation – is intended to rival the US’s Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo.
“I think the Beidou-3 system being operational is a big event,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“This is a big investment from China and makes China independent of US and European systems.”
China started building its global navigation system in the early 1990s to help cars, fishing boats and military tankers navigate using mapping data from the country’s own satellites.
Currently, Huawei mobile devices support the following navigation systems: GPS/AGPS/Glonass/BeiDou/Galileo.And this:
On December 27 last year, Ran Chengqi, director of China Satellite Navigation System Management Office and spokesperson of BeiDou Satellite Navigation System, said that 70% of China's smart phones use Beidou system.So yeah, coming soon to your next mobile phone.
And OK, next question: if a phone can use any of the different services, how does it pick one to use at any particular time? Does it look for the first signal from any of the systems it can use and then go with that system? I just Googled the question, but the answer is not yet clear.
Would be impressive, in an evil overlord sort of way, if the Chinese system allowed them to track anyone whose phone chose to use their network. Is there already a conspiracy theory based on this?
Update: by coincidence, Axios has a short article up about "the looming threats posed by space junk". It's one of those issues that seems constantly talked about, but with little effective action being taken.
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Director death noted
You know, I don't believe I have ever watched more than 30 minutes of any movie by the late Joel Schumacher, and that was probably Flatliners, which I thought very silly.
He was openly gay, and from what I have read and seen, it is easy to see a gay sensibility in some of his comic book movies at least. He was no ordinary gay dude: he claimed to have slept with "up to" 20,000 men. Let's see - at age 80 and assuming 60 years of highly active sex life, that works out to 333 men a year. If you allow for some slowing down in his 70's, the maths could easily indicate more than 365 in a year, or a new partner every day.
Of course, he could have been lying. And the actual quote is "10,000 to 20,000". I'm just looking at the extreme. But seriously, whether straight or gay, and whether 10 or 20 thousand, numbers in that range indicate something more like pathological compulsion than anything healthy.
He was openly gay, and from what I have read and seen, it is easy to see a gay sensibility in some of his comic book movies at least. He was no ordinary gay dude: he claimed to have slept with "up to" 20,000 men. Let's see - at age 80 and assuming 60 years of highly active sex life, that works out to 333 men a year. If you allow for some slowing down in his 70's, the maths could easily indicate more than 365 in a year, or a new partner every day.
Of course, he could have been lying. And the actual quote is "10,000 to 20,000". I'm just looking at the extreme. But seriously, whether straight or gay, and whether 10 or 20 thousand, numbers in that range indicate something more like pathological compulsion than anything healthy.
Topical Nazi killings
With all the talk of Black Lives Mattering, it's topical that France 24 should point out something I hadn't heard of before - the appalling treatment by the Nazis of black soldiers fighting for France in World War 2:
“It started at the end of May 1940, in the Somme region,” Fargettas explained. “There was no order from high up saying that colonial prisoners of war should be killed or even ill-treated. It was impulsive, but the German military hierarchy did nothing to even try to stop it.”
This hatred of black soldiers goes back to the First World War, Fargettas continued: “The Germans used them to accuse the Allies of savagery on the battlefield. The German army had itself been rightly accused of atrocities against civilians, especially in Belgium. Consequently, in response they used the image of the African sharpshooter as a propaganda weapon.”
The peace settlement adumbrated in the Treaty of Versailles meant that the Ruhr and Rhineland, along Germany’s western border, were occupied by France. Many troops from French colonies were stationed there. “In Germany there was a very intensive, mendacious propaganda campaign accusing African soldiers of mass rape and kidnapping. This is what the Germans called the “black horror on the Rhine”; slander which the Nazis would reuse.”
When many Wehrmacht soldiers entered France in May 1940, they had memories of this propaganda. African soldiers were abused by the invaders throughout the country. “These troops often fought very well, while of course the Germans sustained many losses despite their success in the Battle of France, so that produced anger which added to all the resentment already stored up,” said Fargettas.
On June 19, 1940, the violence culminated in the Chasselay massacre. This was two days after Marshal Philippe Pétain’s notorious announcement that he would seek an armistice with the Nazis. The 25th regiment of Senegalese riflemen was posted to the northwest of Lyon, to delay the enemy’s entry into France’s third largest city.
“The Germans expected to seize Lyon quite easily,” Fargettas recounted. “But on the morning of June 19, they faced very strong resistance, in battles lasting for several hours. After the Wehrmacht won the first battles in the afternoon, they executed French as well as African prisoners. But on the next day – after the last pockets of resistance were defeated – they divided the prisoners into two: The French on one side, the Africans on the other. They led the latter down an isolated road. They were sent to a field and machine-gunned.” During these massacres, some French soldiers were also executed or wounded for trying to intervene.
More Trump watch
I hope this is true (the bit about him not wanting to go out on stage)...
...because I did watch some of the speech being live streamed, and I did think at the time that he seemed to be taking a long, long time to come out on stage, and wondered whether it was because he was backstage throwing a fit over the empty seats.
Monday, June 22, 2020
Man in denial
OK, maybe there is a bit too much gloating and laughing going on about how Trump's campaign didn't even half fill its stadium; but on the other hand, there seems to be people in denial at Catallaxy:
I wonder how the Steve Kates brain is processing the estimate of only 6,200 at the stadium; and the absolute lack of evidence of protesters causing any significant problem around it? Cult members watching the decline of their cult can take quite a while to process it...
Low on my list of travel priorities
A few weeks ago I noted how Bangladesh was upset at its portrayal in the Netflix action movie Extraction, which was meant to be set in an extremely grim looking Dhaka, although none of it was filmed there.
So, on the weekend I was looking at the back catalogue of Youtube videos by one of the travel vlogging couples I don't mind mind watching, Kara & Nate. They were in Dhaka a year or so ago, and put out several videos. As always, they try to find the most positive things to say (not sure whether there are sponsorship reasons for some of that). But gee, it would take a lot more than their "this is crazy!" amusement to make me want to go to Dhaka:
They seemed to be the only Westerners in the entire city, but I am not exactly surprised that it is low on people's "must see" list.
So then, seeing I seemed vaguely interested in Bangaldesh, Google threw at me the next day a 30 minute story by Al Jazeera news from 2017 called "Bangladesh's biggest brothel", about an appalling shanty town in the Bangladeshi countryside that has about 1,500 prostitutes, many of whom spoke openly about their lives and problems.
It was awful.
Whoever works in the Bangladesh Tourist Board (and they do have one) has their work cut out for them.
So, on the weekend I was looking at the back catalogue of Youtube videos by one of the travel vlogging couples I don't mind mind watching, Kara & Nate. They were in Dhaka a year or so ago, and put out several videos. As always, they try to find the most positive things to say (not sure whether there are sponsorship reasons for some of that). But gee, it would take a lot more than their "this is crazy!" amusement to make me want to go to Dhaka:
They seemed to be the only Westerners in the entire city, but I am not exactly surprised that it is low on people's "must see" list.
So then, seeing I seemed vaguely interested in Bangaldesh, Google threw at me the next day a 30 minute story by Al Jazeera news from 2017 called "Bangladesh's biggest brothel", about an appalling shanty town in the Bangladeshi countryside that has about 1,500 prostitutes, many of whom spoke openly about their lives and problems.
It was awful.
Whoever works in the Bangladesh Tourist Board (and they do have one) has their work cut out for them.
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